


Partner Trouble

by bea_bickerknife



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Compromise Cunnilingus, Domination/Sadism, Exceedingly unhealthy relationship dynamic, F/M, Here be blood, Hypnosis-induced cane fellatio, Just really a remarkable amount of desk-adjacent sexuality, Missing Scene, Name-Calling, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Radical misinterpretation of the word "mercy", Revenge, Seriously don't try any of this at home, Villains behaving like villains, Violent misuse of office supplies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-26 03:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bea_bickerknife/pseuds/bea_bickerknife
Summary: What happened between "It's part of my character" and "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting?"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, I own none of the characters in this work, nor do I derive any remuneration from its posting.

“Why, Georgina, you little minx.”

Of course. Of course he’d chosen _that_ word, knowing full well the memories associated with it, what it did to her under normal circumstances – and while it felt familiar to find herself in a staredown with Count Olaf, knives poised at each other’s throats offering the promise of mutually-assured destruction, the circumstance also failed to qualify as entirely normal.

Nevertheless, she couldn’t afford to let her composure slip. Not with him. Not this time.

“You have lipstick on your teeth.” He did, but he knew her too well to fall for the deflection.

Lowering his eyes to stare directly at her smugly smiling lips, he allowed a low growl to slip into his voice.

“ _Yes_ , it’s part of my character.”

Georgina felt a flash of grudging admiration at his ability to make a line like that sound like a come-on. As he leaned in toward her, head tilted and lips parted, she caught the predatory glint in his eyes beneath the heavy-handed mascara and the smoky eyeshadow (both lifted from her medicine cabinet, both extortionately expensive, and both now summarily ruined). Desperate to avoid the inevitable weakening of her resolve that always came as a side effect of contact with his lips, her mind hastily assembled an escape plan. Experience dictated that he rarely kissed her without meeting her eyes first, and while youthful naiveté had once ascribed this to his romantic streak, Georgina now suspected a motive more commonly observed in African leopards, which employ eye contact to goad one another into engaging in acts of violence and bloodshed.

Unlike the African leopard, however, Count Olaf could sometimes be dissuaded from one violent act with the judicious substitution of another. Georgina flicked her eyes downward, knowing his gaze would follow hers and noting with a twist of perverse satisfaction the sizeable bulge under the skirt of what used to be her holiday party dress, back when members of the Optometric Association had considered socializing with her to be a coup rather than a liability. Lowering her stiletto toward the straining evidence of precisely how much he was enjoying this little charade, she trusted her assessment of Olaf’s self-protective instincts and her keen understanding of peripheral vision to pinpoint the precise moment to strike.

When she felt reasonably certain that his focus had fixated on the knife in her left hand, Georgina swung her cane up with her right to make contact with the back of his knee. Ligaments over bone provided little resistance against wood over steel and Olaf buckled, crumpling to land squarely on his amply-cushioned posterior beside the reception desk as the scissors he had intended to use against her skittered away uselessly across the floor.

He had no time to cry out or even curse. Georgina loomed above him, the knob of her cane – with the dagger hidden away again in its concealed slot – poised menacingly above his kneecaps. She glared down at Olaf, openly leering as she took in clear outline of his cock through the fabric of his ridiculous sculpting shorts. Leaning back casually against the desk, still wielding her cane and looking very much as if she would relish fracturing every bone in his body with it, she spoke in a voice as bitter as hemlock tea, and twice as lethal.  

“If you value your knees, get on them and stay there.”


	2. Chapter 2

Olaf recognized that tone. It dug into him, deep down into his viscera, down where he felt the most basic of human survival instincts: the instinct to recoil from unexpected motion, for instance, or the instinct to hold one’s breath underwater. Life experience, of course, teaches us a great many other instincts if we manage to live long enough to learn them, including the instinct to duck, and the instinct to avoid making eye contact with strangers on public transportation, but the process of gaining these instincts is rarely pleasant. Only after we have experienced some form of pain – the pain of a concussion after failing to remove one’s head from the path of a heavy object, or the pain of sitting through fifteen consecutive subway stops of tedious small talk – do we establish an instinctual behavior to avoid repeating the experience in the future.

Intimate familiarity with Georgina Orwell had developed a whole host of instincts in Olaf, but when he heard _that tone_ , only one really mattered: the instinct to obey.

Wincing, he righted himself to kneel inelegantly on the floor in front of her. Even in his younger days, when his joints were more forgiving and this had felt more like a game, he had hated this particular posture; now, with the creaks and groans of middle age and a selection of scars of a type only rarely sustained playing Boggle, his body protested even more strenuously against it. Two days in high-heeled pumps, which not so long ago would have represented nothing more than another wine-soaked weekend he could only half-remember afterward, had instead ushered in a persistent, gnawing ache in his lower back, and he began to slump slightly.    

He knew better.

Georgina perched on the edge of the desk, her spine as straight and unyielding as her cane, and Olaf’s mind conjured up an incongruous image of her as a teenager, pacing up and down in a dusty classroom with half a library’s worth of books balanced unwaveringly on her head. _If she doesn’t have a sash with “Best Comportment, Miss McEvity’s School for Girls” on it hidden away in a box somewhere_ , he thought, _I’ll eat my wig_. _Wonder if she still has the uniform…_

Before he could venture further down that pleasant mental path, her voice interrupted him, more headmistress than schoolgirl.

“Closer."

The smile that greeted him when he ventured a glance up at her would have looked sweet on anyone else. “ _Will you come into my parlor_?’ _said the spider to the fly,”_ his mind singsonged at him, but he shuffled forward regardless and settled himself so near to Georgina’s legs that too deep an inhalation would bring his absurdly-padded chest into contact with her shins. After a few moments of sincere effort, he felt his posture begin to sag again despite himself.

With dispassionate aplomb – a phrase which here means “as casually as if she were preparing to tie her shoe” – Georgina drew her left leg up over Olaf’s shoulder and rested her foot squarely on the small of his back, the heel of her black Oxford brogue digging mercilessly into the knot of muscle there. White-hot spasms radiated up his spine and down his thighs, and he clenched his teeth, lips pressed into a fine crimson line and head bowed in a vain attempt to deny her the pleasure of seeing him in pain.

“ _Olaf_.” His name sounded like something between a playground taunt and a warning. “Look at me.”

If you have ever found yourself in a situation of considerable physical discomfort, then you are aware of the fact that, under such circumstances, one often becomes irritable, as though an increase in misery of the mind might decrease the misery of the body. Of course, as any patient who has lashed out at a doctor, nurse, acupuncturist, or chicken soup deliveryperson will tell you, taking out one’s emotional distress on a person who possesses the power to either improve or worsen one’s physical condition is unlikely to expedite the relief of either problem. Count Olaf, however, had moved beyond simple irritation. The backache alone induced that. Adding in the inconvenience of maintaining his most elaborate disguise to date ( _not like it ever fools the damn orphans_ , he groused inwardly), his frustration at Georgina’s insistence on toying with him ( _dirty cocktease_ , _always did like to play with her food first_ ), and now the utter humiliation of kneeling on her floor on the verge of tears like some kind of sniveling human footrest mere _moments_ after he’d thought he might finally gain the upper hand on her this time, Olaf reached the reckless point at which relief seemed far less important than defiance.         

Not trusting his voice, he regretfully abandoned the plethora of epithets dancing on the tip of his tongue – _psychopath, old maid, spiteful fucking **hag** – _ and settled instead for passive resistance, a phrase which here means “continued staring doggedly at the floorboards rather than raising his eyes to comply with the optometrist’s command.”

Like many well-intentioned acts of disobedience, Olaf’s was short-lived and brutally thwarted. Grasping her cane just at the juncture of ebony and silver, Georgina forced its elaborate handle under his chin, wrenching his gaze up from the floor and compelling him, with a threatening hint of added pressure from her heel, to arch his back and crane his neck look her full in the face.            

She could nearly _feel_ her pupils dilating as she stared down at him. His wig was askew. Underneath the rouge that accentuated his sharp cheekbones, a delightful pink flush spread across his face, and _oh, **god** , _she realized, catching sight of the way his mascara had begun to run, _oh,_ **_fuck me_** _, he’s not faking the tears_. She steadied herself for a moment, shifting in a way she hoped he would misinterpret as discomfort. “What a pretty picture you make like this,” she said at last, a hint of mockery smoldering around the edges of the words. “You know, I’m _sure_ I have some tissues in the ladies’ room, if you’d like to go lick your wounds. Crying’s supposed to be very cathartic,” she chuckled mirthlessly. “Or so I’ve heard, anyway.” Her uncanny grey eyes met his with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “I can make this _all_ stop, Olaf. Do you want to leave?”

 _From mutually-assured destruction to a lose-lose scenario in the space of five minutes,_ he thought ruefully. _She hasn’t changed much_. Deciding for once to think before speaking, he considered the options. _If you stay,_ screamed the pain in his back, _she’s going to hurt you. But if you leave,_ rejoined his pride, louder still, _she’s going to **win.**_

“ _No_ ,” he said at last, and he could have sworn that her eyebrows rose just a fraction. “What, does that surprise you?”

As quickly as it had appeared, the expression was gone, and the optometrist’s face settled back into cool contempt. “You using your ego in place of a brain?” she scoffed. “That _never_ surprises me. In fact,” and here she lowered her cane from under his chin, using the cold metal tip to nudge the still-substantial bulge tenting his crotch, “I’d say your brain comes about third on the list of things you think with, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that what you need me for?”

Olaf decided it was his turn to scoff. “I don’t _need_ you.”

“Really? You come all the way to Paltryville, to _my_ office, hand me a bunch of _my own_ geraniums, turn on the charm for _me_ , ask for _my_ help with your little orphan scheme, but you’re telling me you don’t need me?” She snorted indelicately. “ _Bullshit_.”

“Oh, suck it.” _Scathing comeback, Olaf,_ he chided himself almost before the words had left his mouth. _Really witty. That’ll show her._

To his utter surprise, Georgina tilted her head to one side for a moment, appearing to consider his suggestion. “Now, _there’s_ an idea,” she muttered as if to herself, before removing her foot from his back and crossing her legs primly. “Strip.”

His jaw dropped.


	3. Chapter 3

Before he could think better of questioning her, shock and relief outpaced discretion. “ _Really_?”

“If you make it worth watching,” she said, “I might pretend I didn’t hear that."

Rising slowly to his feet, lightheaded with relief and dizzy with the image of Georgina on _her_ knees for a change – _she always used to give the best head if you could talk her into it,_ he recalled with a warm surge to his groin, _no gag reflex at all, swallowed like a two-bit tramp, **fuck** , that was hot _– Olaf slid one hand under the hem of his borrowed dress and efficiently if awkwardly tugged the padded shorts down his legs. He turned and took a few ungainly steps to kick them under the side table; feeling her eyes on his back, he reached around to lower the zipper, only to discover that the fabric was too tight to allow that particular maneuver. He arranged his face into what he hoped was an attractive facsimile of wide-eyed helplessness before glancing over his shoulder, tilting his head to ensure a flattering angle.

“Oh, Doctor Orwell,” he began in his sultriest Shirley tone, “I seem to have gotten myself stuck. Would you mind giving me a,” he paused briefly, searching for the most appropriate innuendo, “ _helping hand_?”

 _Damn him_ , Georgina cursed inwardly, halfway across the room before she’d even consciously decided to stand up. _Damn him for knowing how well that works. Damn him for knowing **exactly** what he’s doing._ Keeping her voice as brusque and businesslike as possible under the circumstances, she tugged zipper downwards. “This is what you get for coming to work dressed like a _slut_.”

She knew she wasn’t imagining the shiver that particular epithet elicited. _See, Olaf? You’re not the only one who can play this game_.

The dress fell open and she eyed the lattice of scars crisscrossing his back. Some of them – the very oldest ones, for the most part – had been inadvertent scratches in the heat of the moment while he was fucking her into whatever backseat, park bench, or stranger’s dining room table they had decided would serve as that day’s venue of debauchery. The rest were intentional, increasingly savage, and she reached out to drag the nail of her index finger along a particularly livid example that she had inflicted with a bullwhip. Immediately afterward, if she remembered correctly, she had discovered for the first time just how good it felt to watch him come as tears streamed down his face.

A shiver of pleasurable shame ran down Olaf’s spine. He remembered, too.

Before the heat of his skin had a chance to melt her self-control, she spun on her heel and settled into the dark wooden desk chair, leaning back to watch in undisguised amusement as Olaf stuffed a pair of silicone pads into the umbrella stand below her coat rack. Hazarding a glance over his shoulder, Olaf found himself struck, not for the first time, by the peculiar gift Georgina had for arranging herself on any piece of furniture as if it were a throne. _And what does that make **me**_ , he gloated inwardly, _if I can turn a queen into a cocksucker?_

Still smirking at the thought, he turned to face her, letting scarlet satin slink down his body to pool like blood on the floor.    

The novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, in introducing the deeply unlikable protagonist of one of his lesser-known works, began thus: “I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.” Had this gloomy luminary of Russian literature chosen to describe Count Olaf, he might have employed a similar strategy. Count Olaf, too, was a sick man, though his condition stemmed not from a vodka-induced inflammation of the liver (he drank wine), but from a greed-induced delusion of the mind. He was also, as Georgina recalled every night when she woke from the familiar nightmare, gasping for air and fighting to keep her head above the surface of an imagined river, a spiteful man. He was not, however, an entirely unattractive man. As he stood in front of her, a twisted wet dream of shapely legs, sinewy muscle, and the particular type of filth that had nothing to do with hygiene, she almost regretted her self-imposed, Olaf-specific vow of chastity.

 _Almost_.

He moved toward her with a gait slightly too predatory to qualify as a strut. _Don’t give it away_ , she admonished herself, flicking her gaze up to his smug face before dropping it back to his jutting erection and licking her lips pointedly. _Let him think he’s getting what he wants_. _Yellow-bellied bastard can’t know until it’s too late._

If Olaf’s wicked grin had somehow failed to alert her to the success of her ruse, then the confidence with which he insinuated himself to stand between her spread legs would have dispelled all doubt.  

“ _Ah, ah, ah_.” Confusion registered on his face as he recognized the tone she used to scold cats. “Your exact words were ‘suck it,’ weren’t they?” He nodded, suddenly sensing a trap but not quite knowing in which direction it lay. “Well, you’re a degenerate, but you're not quite an _it_. _This_ , on the other hand,” and here she wrapped her fingers around the shaft of her cane, stroking the handle with her thumb in a way that made his swollen cock throb with jealousy, “… _is_. Now, get back on your knees where you belong.”

That tone again, regal silk over imperious steel, and as she leaned back, resplendent in royal purple, everything about Georgina’s bearing seemed to suggest the presence of an unseen crown. _That’s not a cane_ , supplied the poetic portion of his mind as he sank back onto the floor. _It’s a damn scepter, and – just a wild guess, here – she’s probably not about to knight you with it._  

With a a deceptively demure tilt of her head, she dragged the tip down his jawline, pausing at the outer edge of his over-lined lips. “Open your mouth,” she pronounced, a slow, sinister grin spreading across her face, “and _suck it_.”

Olaf recoiled. “You’ve been walking around a lumber mill with that thing. It’s disgusting.”  

“That never stopped me from sucking _you_ ,” she said, sweetly condescending. The cane pressed more insistently against his cheek. “Would you like me to repeat myself, or would you like to like to keep all of your teeth?”

Before he could risk what remained of his dental health on a comment about penis envy, Georgina shifted subtly, nearly imperceptibly, against the cushioned seat of the desk chair. Olaf thought he had detected a similar movement earlier, against the desk, but now he knew for certain that this was the same delicate stirring he’d seen on a long-ago train trip across the Hinterlands, directly following an hour’s worth of increasingly lewd suggestions that she’d diligently pretended to ignore and directly preceding an encounter in a cramped and swaying lavatory that had forever altered his perception of the phrase “riding the rails.” _Oh, she’s **close** , _he realized. _Push her a little further and she’ll snap like kindling, and we’ll **see** who gets hurt this time_.


	4. Chapter 4

From under mascara-heavy lashes, he locked eyes with her as he turned his head fractionally to the side and wrapped his lips around the cold pewter tip, tasting sawdust and mulch and something bitter that alarmed him until he identified it as the floor polish she used in her office. Rather belatedly, Olaf realized that he had never performed anything like fellatio while stone-cold sober, but before his improvisational instincts could take over, Georgina interceded.

Applied to the tone of a human voice, the word _suggestive_ most often indicates that the speaker intends to imply something indecent or risqué, but does not wish to state it overtly, generally because he or she feels that undisguised eroticism might not please his or her partner, or feels embarrassed to use such language in the suspected presence of the cabal of spies lurking just out of sight behind a suspiciously-positioned ficus. Applied in another context, however, the word _suggestive_ also relates to the process by which a hypnotist implants ideas in the mind of a patient (if the purpose of the hypnosis is noble) or a victim (if the purpose of the hypnosis is nefarious). Georgina Orwell considered it a point of personal and professional pride that she could employ both definitions simultaneously.

“Olaf,” she began, her voice low and smooth and narcotic, “I want you to think back to the summer we spent by Lake Lachrymose. Do you remember that, _handsome_?”

He felt his mind go curiously blank, save for the memories of a far-off, golden summer, and he nodded, the cane a heavy but suddenly pleasant weight on his tongue.

“And do you remember the night of the bonfire? When I snuck off to meet you?”

Instantly, darkness closed in around him and he heard the distant strains of three people whistling Mozart’s fourteenth symphony in perfect harmony. Briny air, tinged with smoke as the wind carried it up from the beach below, perfumed his hiding place amid the tall grass on the bluff. Another nod.

“ _Wonderful_. Now, walk down the path until you come to the lighthouse.”

In his mind’s eye, the structure loomed closer and closer as the whistled melody died away. There, leaning against the lavender-painted wall, he saw himself as a much younger man, head thrown back, sandy hair ruffling in the breeze, trousers slouching around his ankles. In front of him, with her back to the sea ( _large lake_ , his subconscious helpfully corrected him) knelt a promising optometrist a few years older than he, bottle-blonde braid bouncing rhythmically against her shoulder as she sucked him.

“More tongue.” The command seemed to come from his younger self and Georgina simultaneously, his words in the memory tangled up with her mesmeric voice in his ears, and he began to lap at the cane in earnest, groaning as he felt the phantom of her slick mouth tightening around him. From the vantage point of his subconscious, he marveled down at her.  

She shouldn’t have been with him at all. She _should_ have been on the beach, trading increasingly outlandish stories with Josephine while Ike and the Baudelaires refined their classical whistling technique, but instead she had accepted the invitation he left for her beside the beach path that morning (nine stones for nine o’clock, stacked one on top of the other to indicate the Lavender Lighthouse), and at about half-past nine, she had dropped to her knees in her blue-and-white striped swimsuit, soft pink lips sliding up and down his shaft as he dictated instructions in the general direction of the top of her head.

“Use your hands.” Olaf’s expertly-manicured fingers closed around the ebony. “ _Yes_. Do that thing with your wrist.”

Rather maladroitly – a word which here means “clumsily, not having had much occasion to move in quite this way before” – he incorporated a twist of his wrist into each downward stroke. Back against the lighthouse, however, there was absolutely nothing inexpert about the way Georgina handled him, her fist moving in perfect counterpoint to her mouth as she moaned around his length, the vibration adding a third sensation to the tactile fusion.   

He dug his hand into the salt-brittle hair at the crown of her head, knuckles whitening by the second. “ _Ohh_ , you’re _loving_ this, aren’t you?” On the floor of Georgina’s office, Olaf bobbed his head, hollowing his cheeks and letting her sink the cane deeper into his mouth. “That’s right, take it, _take it_ , _all_ the way down…” His hips began to stutter, driving his weeping cock erratically and uncontrollably into the empty air in front of him as his younger self hurtled toward the edge. “Gonna come, oh _FUCK_ , gonna come down your throat, _god,_ you _whore_ , you’re so  _fucking_ good at this, don’t stop –”

The summer night collapsed around him the instant the final plosive of _stop_ reached his ears. Bereft of artificially-imposed focus, his mind felt cluttered, unbalanced by the abrupt return to full consciousness, and the hot coil of anticipation in his groin throbbed sharply at this eleventh-hour impediment to release, but when he made to steady himself with a deep breath, he choked instead. His chest heaved, his face reddened, and he tilted his head back, carefully relaxing his throat to release the cane without gagging on it before looking up at Georgina with accusatory, incredulous eyes. “You… _hypnotized_ me?”

“Did you really think I’d let you anywhere near me if I hadn’t?”

His brow furrowed. “How? _When_?”

“Tell me,” she smirked, “was it fun for you, spying on my sessions from the storage closet?” Her smile widened when he blanched. “Stealth never was your strong suit. Neither was common sense, which might explain why you didn’t think to look away from the projector while I was working. A good hypnotist can multitask, you know.” She leaned forward to lower herself to his eye level. “And we both know I’m _very_ good.”

For a moment, Olaf looked gobsmacked – a word which here means “thoroughly taken aback at the notion that he could have failed to notice his ex-girlfriend hypnotizing him like any other of her unsuspecting lumber minions.” For as long as he’d known her, Georgina had craved authority, but she had generally exerted it physically; her expertise with whips and wax and riding crops never failed to bring him to his literal and metaphorical knees, and in his rare moments of honesty, he could admit to himself that as much as she needed to control him, he needed, on occasion, to give himself over to someone else’s will for a while. He considered himself a leader of practically Napoleonic proportions, his theatrical genius equaled only by his criminal brilliance, so it followed that erotic submission should provide a welcome if perverse break from the ceaseless duties of perceived command. _And Napoleon was French_ , he reminded himself, _so he probably didn’t mind a little domination, either_.

Fucking Georgina had always felt a little like being at war with her, and Olaf viewed her subjugation of his body as a sort of frontal assault: a vicious but ultimately honorable form of combat. This new incursion on his mind, however, represented guerrilla warfare, a coup that was bloodless only because he hadn’t known to put up a fight. Visceral fury twisted his features at the thought, and he saw a flicker of fear behind her glasses that made his cock twitch. _That’s right, my pet. It’s time you remembered who you’re dealing with._ With an almighty yank, he jerked the cane from her hands and flung it over the desk, where it shattered a lamp and sent her incoming mail tray clattering to the ground before coming to rest out of reach on the opposite side of the room.

Georgina flinched, but held her ground. _You don’t need it_. _As long as you have a voice, you’re a threat. Even **he** can’t have forgotten that._

He hadn’t.


	5. Chapter 5

Taking advantage of her posture, Olaf reached up and seized her forearm, wrenching her off her chair and toppling them both to the floor; she landed on top of him, of course, but his other hand closed over her mouth. “Thinking of pulling your little sci-fi mind-control voodoo stunt again?” he jeered. “You never used to need _parlor tricks_ to keep me in line, you know.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Georgina spied the shears he had dropped during their earlier confrontation, ever-so-slightly out of reach a few inches beyond the victory rolls of his wig. Slowly, deliberately, she draped herself full-length over him, waiting for him to remove his hand from her mouth before – _ends and means, Georgina –_ brushing her lips over his, hoping the kiss would disarm and distract him as she groped blindly in the vicinity of the ersatz weapon.

It did. Instantly, his hands were omnipresent, sweeping and cupping and scratching and caressing every inch of her body he could reach as he orchestrated a seduction with his lips. _He’s always been too good at this_ , Georgina thought hazily, noting with concern that somehow _he_ was kissing _her_ , rather than the other, safer way around. Her head began to swim as he sucked her tongue into his mouth, tasting of black liquorice and coffee and single-malt Scotch – _bastard found the Glenfiddich –_ and she allowed herself a throaty moan, lowering her right hand toward his straining erection.   

“ _Yes_ , go on, you know you want to. You’ve been _dying_ for it since our little tea party, haven’t you, my filthy little minx?”

Her left hand seized cool metal. With a flick of her wrist, the scissors snapped open to their widest extent, forming the legs of a steel ballerina in a lethal _grand jeté,_ and just as he recognized the glint in her eye as triumph, Georgina brought the crux of the sharpened blades down to press into his Adam’s apple.   _  
_

“Call me that one more time,” she said, as pleasant and composed as if she were ordering a cup of coffee, “and I _promise_ the only one dying today will be you.”

Olaf’s expression as arousal and anger collided violently with terror sent a thrill straight to her groin, and she gave in to the urge to rock herself against his naked length, loving the strangled, guttural groan he made in response.

At the lonely crossroads of evolutionary biology and alliteration lie the so-called “four F’s,” which represent the basic drives that have developed in humans and other animals to ensure the continuation of the species. The first F stands for _feeding_ , and it refers to the drive to avoid the inconvenience of malnourishment and starvation by ingesting a sufficient amount of appropriate food. The second F stands for _fleeing_ , and it refers to the drive to abscond from peril by means of hasty decampment, which is a fancy way of saying “run away as quickly as your physiology, environment, and footwear allow, even if your pursuer has very long legs and your only possible path of escape involves a shaky bridge over a treacherous river.” The third F stands for _fighting_ , and it refers to a more aggressive method of addressing danger, namely by attempting to out-maneuver it through the use of tactical thinking, brute force, or some combination of both. The final F stands for _fucking_ , and it is a peculiar quirk of human biochemistry that, in unusual people under unusual circumstances, this fourth drive can often be triggered by the third.

Count Olaf and Georgina Orwell had always been unusual people.

Delicious friction against his cock juxtaposed with the cold, unyielding bite of the blades against his throat to tilt the balance of Olaf’s impulses in favor of the fourth and final F. Feeling her wet heat through the fabric of her trousers, his arousal reaching a fever pitch in his ears, he uttered the three words he knew stood the best chance of getting him what he wanted. “I need you. Georgina, I _need_ you.”

He made it sound so simple, an artless if belated epiphany, and a decade ago, she would have thought that the tremble in his voice was sincerity. A decade ago, _that_ phrase in _that_ tone from _that_ mouth would have had her spreading her legs in seconds flat. A decade ago, she would have heard the confession he wanted her to hear, rather than the calculated manipulation he thought she wouldn’t.

Ten years had passed, but Georgina’s hearing had improved with age.

“Oh, that’s nowhere _near_ good enough,” she replied, quietly frigid. The shears dug deeper, and he saw something wild flash in her eyes. “You’re going to tell me you’re sorry for ruining me. _Beg_ _me_ to forgive you for leaving me under that bridge. _Say it_.” She lowered her head, whispering pure poison into his ear. “And you’d better mean it, because you’ve always been an _awful_ actor.”

Just for a moment, she thought he was about to spit in her face. When he opened his mouth, however, what emerged was neither saliva nor a heartfelt apology, but malice. “Oh, Georgina, Georgina, Geor _gi_ na,” he said, “you were ruined _long_ before I met you. That’s what made it so easy.” His lipstick-smeared mouth twisted into a sneer. “That’s what makes _you_ so easy.”

Her backhand had him tasting blood, but after a moment, he continued. “And I will _never_ ,” he ground out in his most malevolent tone, weighting his words very carefully, “beg you for _anything_ , you sad, sadistic _bitch_.”  

He expected an explosion – of screaming, of pain, of stars and spots in his vision. Instead, he received silence.

Dead silence.

Then _laughter_.

Olaf had never heard her laugh like this. In fact, he felt absolutely certain he had never heard any human being laugh like this. Snickering, guffawing, chuckling, giggling, even cackling – none of the standard words seemed to apply. She laughed like a house fire burns, bright and noxious and inescapable, and as she laughed, she wrapped her free hand around the back of his neck the way she had done to pull him in to kiss her a thousand times before.

Lips inches from his, with laughter still in her eyes, she drew the keen and gleaming blade of the shears across his cheek.


	6. Chapter 6

If you have ever glanced at the cover of the sort of magazine that targets women waiting in line at the grocery store, then you have almost certainly encountered the expression “keeping the spark alive,” which, unless it appears in the context of an article pertaining to camping, woodland survival, or arson, is a figurative phrase that refers to the tactic of introducing new and stimulating elements into a long-standing romance in an effort to prevent one, both, or all of the partners involved from becoming so bored that they either terminate the relationship or take up stamp collecting. The idea of “keeping the spark alive” suggests that novelty combats apathy, and in this way it is predicated upon the same assumption as the aphorism “familiarity breeds contempt.”   

Twenty years of familiarity, ten years of contempt, and this time it wasn’t the arsonist but the hypnotist who fanned the spark into an inferno.

Olaf had never doubted Georgina’s capacity for casual brutality. He knew the metaphorical skeletons in her closet almost as intimately as his own, and he had also witnessed firsthand how the four literal ones hanging in her storage room had sustained such an unusual and diverse array of skull fractures (the cane, like most weapons, became lethal only with practice). Sex with her had always been best when one or both of them had blood on their hands, but on the occasions when it came from him, she had invariably extended him the courtesy of confining the evidence to areas of his body where it wouldn’t raise questions in public.

As far as Georgina was concerned, any and all claim he once had on her courtesy drowned a decade before. Having set the scissors back on the desk, out of his reach but easily within hers, she made a mental note that Olaf should really be the one to clean them – _preferably without the use of his hands_ , she decided – before reaching down with a remarkably steady finger to smear the crimson line she had etched under his perfect porcelain cheekbone. “I’ve always said red was your color, you know.”

His cheek smarted at the contact, and he fought to suppress a grimace. “If that leaves a scar, Georgina, I swear to God I’ll…"

Her eyes had lost their savagery, but that didn’t make the look she fixed him with any less menacing. “Think _very_ carefully before you finish that thought." When he closed his mouth, she inclined her head to inspect the wound more closely. “Oh, don’t be such a baby. It’ll fade in a month or two.”

“And I suppose you think I should be kissing your ring for being so merciful.”

“You never could tell the difference between mercy and self-control,” she said. “If I ruined your pretty face, you’d get to hate me every time you saw the scar on it. This way, every time you look in a mirror, you’ll have to remember who let you keep it so pretty.” He flinched as she leaned closer, her hair falling forward and brushing his skin, a mocking lilt in her voice.  “You’ll have to be _grateful_.”   

Never had the phrase _adding insult to injury_ seemed more appropriate to Olaf than it did in that moment.

“ _This_ is self-control,” she continued. Delicately, with excruciating precision, she pressed her mouth against the cut, and when she pulled back to smile at him, her pink lips were smudged with red. “Would you like me to show you mercy?”

Coming from Georgina Orwell, the question sounded forebodingly foreign; however, he knew her well enough to guess at the unspoken alternatives, and so, in the name of curiosity more than hope, he nodded. 

Like most qualities, the quality of mercy comes in many guises, which is a fancy way of saying that it looks different in different situations. If you are a certain type of deity, for instance, mercy may come in the guise of granting a recently departed soul a pleasant afterlife, despite the fact that its behavior during its time on earth did not quite live up to your expectations. If you are a treasury secretary involved in a duel, mercy may come in the guise of discharging your weapon into the sky, rather than into your adversary. And if you are a villainous, violent, and vengeful optometrist who has just perpetrated an act of partial retribution on an actor who has on various occasions broken your heart, stolen your belongings, and left you for dead, but whose scheme to embezzle a fortune from the children of your enemies appeals to your villainy, violence, and vengeance, mercy may come in the guise of striking a deal with your own personal devil.

“We’ve obviously reached an impasse,” began Georgina, using a term which here refers to a position from which two equally stubborn people refuse to back down, and consequently cannot move forward. “You need –” A hasty rephrasing. “You _want_ me to hold up my end of your orphan plot, but I won’t do that without a sincere apology for what you did the _last_ time I got involved, and you can’t admit you did anything wrong. You want me to countermand your trigger words and break your hypnosis, but I won’t do that without assurance that you’re not using me again, and you can’t convince me of that because I know your word means _less_ than nothing.” She took a breath before continuing. “So, in the interest of _mercy,_ I’m going to propose a compromise.”


	7. Chapter 7

The word _compromise_ did not rank among Olaf’s favorites, but it did strike him as an improvement over the words _permanent disfigurement_. “I’m listening,” he said, with an unspoken “so get to the point."

“If you won’t say you’re sorry, and I won’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth anyway, then I’d say _talking_ is the problem here, wouldn’t you?”

Surprised and strangely disappointed to hear that she didn’t consider _him_ the main problem, he nodded. “That sounds...reasonable.” _Maybe she has a gag in the cabinet_ , he speculated. _Wouldn’t put it past her. Maybe that’s where this is going._

That was not where this was going.

“You don’t want to apologize? _Fine_. You’re going to _prove_ that you’re capable of thinking of someone other than yourself, and I’m going to accept that in lieu of an apology. No begging necessary. You won’t have to say a word.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, beady eyes narrow and eyebrow furrowed with suspicion. "Give my troupe the day off? Buy Phil a replacement leg? Make some kind of,” and here he shuddered visibly, “ _charitable donation_?” _Wait a minute_ , his mind supplied, _if you donate enough money to an orphanage, do they let you pick out a kid with an enormous fortune to take home_? Recognizing that this sort of thinking would get him nowhere in his present situation, he filed the idea away for further investigation at a later date.

“Your troupe is full of unemployed actors,” she said. “They have _every_ day off. Phil is perfectly happy to be the one-legged wonder of the lumber business, and we both know charity is for pushovers.” As soon as the words had left her mouth, Georgina rose to her feet with a fluidity of movement that Olaf found highly improbable after such a long time on her knees and adopted her habitual posture against the side of her desk. “And anyway,” she continued, lowering one hand to her waistband and shooting him a pointed glance over the top of her spectacles, “that’s not _quite_ what I had in mind.”

 _Of course_. _Of **course** her definition of mercy includes getting tongue-fucked in her office. In broad daylight. _ Still, he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she would relish an opportunity to leave him in the cold – a phrase which here means “rescind her offer to hypnotize one of the Baudelaire orphans into causing a fatal accident” – and he supposed that getting her off would require at least marginally less time and effort than reworking his entire scheme without her specialized skill set. “Wouldn’t you like to lie down first?” he coaxed, propping himself up on his elbows and hoping against hope to sound gentlemanly and selfless while sparing himself the dual hardship of performing his least favorite act in his least favorite position. 

She looked up from untying her shoes to make the kind of eye contact Olaf tended to associate with the moment before a dogfight. “If you don’t like the terms of the compromise, you’re going find me _much_ less merciful and I’d better find you _much_ more apologetic.” _Well, so much for **that**_. “Last chance. Your knees or your pride. I’ll let you pick.”

Unsurprisingly, he knelt.

Somewhat more surprisingly, she stepped away from him to rummage for something on the shelves of the glass-doored cabinet where, he had noticed during his interminable hours of spurious receptionist duty, she kept a series of ominous-looking bottles containing ominous-sounding chemicals. “What are you looking for?” Olaf asked, relying on his theatrical training to keep the alarm out of his voice

With a small, triumphant _ah-ha_ , Georgina extricated something from the cabinet, careful not to disturb the vials. "Insurance," she replied, and when she turned back to face him, he saw a length of rope in her hand. He made to protest, but she held up her other hand in warning. “You know the alternative, and you’ve made it _very_ clear you don’t like it.” She flicked her eyes deliberately toward the cane across the room, then back toward his mouth. “Well. You don’t like it _afterward_ , anyway,” she shrugged, “but if you’d prefer…”

“ _No_.” The response was immediate and unequivocal, and he pressed his wrists together behind his back, allowing her to bind them.

She planted herself directly in front of him, barefoot and smirking. “Can you still do it?”

“Do what?”

Directly at his eye level, the fingers of her right hand toyed with the button of her trousers, and he suddenly took her meaning. _Well_ , _it’s not as if it’ll be the strangest thing you’ve had in your mouth today_ , he reassured himself before leaning in to close his mouth around it. Unfortunately, time and physics conspired against him: This particular skill had fallen out of practice, and the button itself put up a fight, its rounded surface and diminutive size outmaneuvering him at every attempt.

“Oh, _honestly_ ,” huffed Georgina after a few moments, “I’ll just do it myself. As usual.” A flick of the wrist accomplished the task. “Do you think you can handle the zipper, or are you going to botch that, too?”

With more force than strictly necessary, Olaf snapped his teeth closed on the metal tab, red lips pulled back in a snarl, and tugged it smoothly down. Catching the scent of her arousal, earthy and clean and intensely, intimately familiar, he glanced incredulously up at her. “You’re not wearing underwear.” A pause as the penny dropped. “You devious little…you _planned_ this.”

“I’m not wearing underwear,” Georgina replied coolly, “because my _receptionist_ decided not to do laundry yesterday. Some of us prefer not to re-wear undergarments, regardless of whether or not they still look clean.” This explanation and the notion that she had orchestrated the day’s events were not, of course, mutually exclusive; however, if Olaf noticed this, he kept schtum – a phrase which here means “decided not to mention it” – and Georgina certainly didn’t feel the need to point it out. Instead, she slipped the purple silk over her hips and onto the floor and perched once more on the edge of her desk, legs spread invitingly.


	8. Chapter 8

For all her more unpleasant qualities, Olaf reflected – her bitterness, her tendency toward hysteria, her neurotic pursuit of control in all its forms – Georgina Orwell at least had the decency to be easy on the eyes. He wouldn’t quite call her beautiful, not unless he wanted something, but he found a certain appeal in the compact shapeliness of her body, and in the right light, he could see that time hadn’t yet effaced all evidence of the girl he lured to the lighthouse.

 _Well_ , he thought, damning her with faint praise even as he felt his mouth begin to water, _at least she hasn’t let herself go completely._

As he shuffled forward, she rested her thighs on his shoulders, locking her ankles behind his back and using her calves to pin him flush against the desk. Trapped between smooth mahogany and the warm skin of his own abdomen, his cock twitched, and he shifted against the wood, the much-needed friction sending a pleasurable jolt from the tip of his length to somewhere deep in his abdomen. **_Yes,_** _now **that** feels more like mercy_.

“Oh, and Olaf?” Her voice sounded sweetly casual, which almost certainly meant that she was deathly serious. “If you come, the deal’s off.”   

With that, she wrapped her legs more tightly around him, letting her head fall back as the heat of his familiar mouth closed over her.

Georgina had always found it ironic that a man as stupendously arrogant and swaggeringly braggadocious as Count Olaf, with his inability to resist crowing over the details of his latest conquests with anyone who would listen, somehow succeeded in keeping his greatest carnal talent more or less to himself. She supposed that his hedonism exceeded his narcissism – he was willing to forego proclaiming his gift to the world if it meant that he could avoid performing an act that didn’t directly gratify him. _Then again_ , she reflected a little dizzily, _maybe it’s a career move._ _God knows he gets enough tail as it is. If word got out, he’d never get anything else done._

The small, slippery noises he was making seemed preternaturally loud in the silence of the office, and it occurred to her that nothing in their agreement had stipulated that she couldn’t play dirty. Olaf liked his women vocal, and while she generally made it a point to avoid giving him what he liked, she suspected that under these specific circumstances, stroking his ego might prove equally effective as stroking his member when it came to provoking a premature and involuntary forfeiture.    

In the interest of realism (or so she told herself), she tested the waters with a soft moan as he feathered over her slit. “ _Mm,_ you know I love the way you tease.” It was a blatant lie; however, even the most rudimentary reverse psychology tended to work well on Olaf, and his movements grew bolder, tongue tracing a rhythmic pattern of slow, steady, maddening circles that they both knew could bring her to the edge with obscene efficiency.    

After a few thoroughly enjoyable minutes of comparative silence designed to test his patience and tire his tongue, she spoke up again. “You know, I’d almost forgotten how _good_ you are at this.” She hadn’t forgotten, of course, not in the slightest, but between the flattery and the little gasping breaths she had been taking each time he grazed the hood of her clit, she succeeded in coaxing out a jerk of his hips, followed by a low groan that vibrated pleasantly against her sensitized flesh.  

“That’s right,” she murmured, her voice silky-hot in his ears, “you know you want to. I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I? Making you do all sorts of vile, _filthy_ things? Go on, you deserve a reward.” A wicked grin crept over her face as he began to grind in earnest. “ _Yes_ , _just_ like that, doesn’t that feel _good_? You’re _so_ hard, you must be _so_ close…just imagine, if you hadn’t screwed me over, you could be screwing _me_ instead.”

“ _Mmf_ ,” came the response, and Olaf’s lips wrapped around her clit, sucking gently as his tongue slid back and forth horizontally across the pebbled bud, head bobbing slightly with his thrusts. _If I’m going down, you’re coming with me_ , he vowed, though he was unfortunately much too far gone to appreciate the pun.

Georgina felt the telltale flush of her chest and a sudden rush of heat. _Hurry up, hurry up, hurry **up** ,_ she urged herself, _say whatever he needs to hear, lie through your teeth, he **has** to lose at this. _“Just imagine, you’d be– _unh,_ ” she interrupted herself with a guttural staccato sound as he hit his stride, “ _so_ deep, _yes_ , you _know_ how wet you make me, don’t you?” _Well,_ she admitted, _**that’s** hardly a lie._ “How would you want it, hmm? Would you bend me over right here? Fuck me in my own exam chair? On my hands and knees in the waiting room, where _anybody_ could walk in? We both know you love to put on a show…” Even without the aid of hypnosis, her words blossomed into lurid images in his mind, and she caught the way his whole body seemed to stutter. _Almost there, **god** , so close_, and as her abdomen began to tighten, she became aware that she wasn’t referring only to him anymore. “You’re _unspeakable_ ,” she growled, rocking herself against his face. “You’re a _whore,_ so lick me like one.”

She thought she had never seen Olaf look quite so exquisitely wrecked as he did in that moment, buried between her thighs with his disheveled wig, his ruined makeup, and his bloody cheek, his chin slick with her arousal, grinding himself shamelessly against her desk, and it was the thought that she had finally succeeded not only in debauching him but _debasing_ him that pushed her beyond the point of no return. Neither willing nor able to stop herself, Georgina let her climax roll through her in waves, and only the thought that he would consider it a coup stopped her from screaming.

When the spots faded from her vision, she peered down at him, fully prepared to demand that he remove the evidence of his failure from her desk before it ruined the wood, but the words never left her mouth.

There was no evidence.

Olaf’s body relaxed, but not as a result of exhaustion. His chest heaved, but not with a sigh of resignation. His jaw clenched, but not in an effort to bite back shame, and as he sat back on his heels to reveal his still-rigid length, he had the audacity to look proud. “ _That,_ ” he panted, "was self-control.”

A long, _long_ pause followed. Fragments of several conflicting expressions crossed Georgina’s face in rapid succession as she wrestled with herself, but her mind kept circling back to the same time-worn tautology: _a deal’s a deal_. She recognized that her moral compass never quite pointed north – _not that anyone ever lets me forget it_ , she had groused on more than one occasion, **_Christ_** _, you get caught hypnotizing **one** member of the medical board… – _but an unconventional compass is a compass nonetheless. Georgina Orwell had followed hers enthusiastically down the paths of mind control, murder, and recreational sadomasochism, but she categorically refused to go back on her word. _He held up his end of the bargain_ , she admitted. _So you’re stuck with him for a week. So what? A little hypnosis, a little manslaughter, a little revenge, he’ll owe you a favor, and you’ll get some money out of it. What could go wr-_

She knew better than to even _think_ that question.  

“You're a mess,” she said at last, glancing down at him with absolute dispassion as she slipped back into her trousers. “Pull yourself together and go wait in the waiting room. Concealer’s in the medicine cabinet.”

“But you haven’t untied –”

Having finished lacing her Oxfords, she crossed to the telephone, dialed a number, and waited. “Fernald?” she inquired with a smirk. “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I  _have_ seen him. He's tied up at the office." A pause. "You know, I'm sure he could use the help. I’ll let him fill you in.” Leaving the earpiece dangling over the far edge of the desk by its cord, she turned on her heel and strode up the stairs.

As he struggled on bruised knees toward the receiver, back aching and face bleeding and cock weeping, her voice filtered down from the clinic, brisk and strident and utterly professional. “I’m _so_ sorry to keep you waiting…”

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was inspired by one of @raygorartshit's illustrations, which can be found here: http://raygorartshit.tumblr.com/post/157177657615/dr-georgina-orwell-being-a-total-dom-is-honestly).
> 
> Shout-out to Xavantina, who knows that great minds think (kink?) alike, particularly when cane fellatio is involved.


End file.
